My heart belongs to Frank Robson.
Apologies to anyone who may have already read this in the Easter edition of the Good Weekend, but it's too good to keep secret.
The consistently wonderful Frank Robson has profiled Tony Abbott, and made quite a fool of the man in question without resorting to the usual 'let's make fun of the smarmy big-eared prick' tactics we in the Left are often guilty of.
Here is my absolute favourite bit:
' "(Religious faith) does help in resisting the ordinary human urges to take what we can get away with, and that is why (it) is so thoroughly a factor for good in our public as well as our private life." - from Tony Abbott's speech during the RU486 debate.
Only Abbott knows what urges his faith has helped him resist in recent times, but I have a recording that shows fiddling with facts isn't one of them. A short background: Abbott wants the Federal Government to take over responsibility for public hospitals from the states, which is not Coalition policy. Undeterred, the Health Minister recently proposed several options for more federal involvement in the hospital system to a closed-door health conference in Adelaide.
Mid-interview, Abbott moves abruptly from karate fights with black activists to the hospital theme, which he urges me to work into the story. Ignoring my lack of enthusiasm, he proposes various ways I could push his hobbyhorse without landing him in trouble for blabbing about a confidential conference. "You know," he prompts, "you've asked me a series of penetrating questions about it. And under your relentless cross-examination - har, har, har! - I've been forced to reveal some of my innermost thinking!
"What I should add, because this gives me a bit of - between ourselves - cover, the question you asked me was, 'I heard on the grapevine that at the conference...in Adelaide, you talked a little bit about the fundamental directions the next Health Care Agreements could take...' Now it was supposed to be off-the-record and I'm shocked that anyone revealed it to you, but...I can't deny that this is what I said."
And so on. Cooking up angles may be a daily fact of life in Canberra. But in the long term, religious faith or not, you have to wonder what the spin cycle does to people's sense of reality.'
Just. Lovely.
571 days til the next election.
Comments
Wasn't it just. Put a little smile on my dial for the rest of the Easter weekend, I'll tell you.
I loved that bit too - and I thought "no politician will EVER speak to Frank Robson again". But good on him for revealing Abbott to be the stupid prick he is.
Meh. We knew that already in so many ways.
Thing that gets my goat is the implicit assumption from his RU-486 speech that people without religion are missing something that would help us resist the urge to 'take what we can get away with'.
I don't believe in God, but I'm not greedy, violent or proscriptive of other people's behaviour. Unlike a great many Christians/Moslems/Jews etc.
Frank Robson did an equally brilliant profile about three years ago where he got absolutely shickered with Amanda 'Loves a Drop' Vanstone.
I guess enough time passed between the two pieces for the Liberals to forget what a cunning genius he is.
When I read this passage out to my partner over the breakfast table, he actually snorted a small piece of muesli out of a nostril. You can imagine that I was suitably impressed.
Don't you just love Abbott's equating "thinking seriously" with being religious? I'll agree with the lack of deep thought in society generally, but religion hasn't been the sole, or best, preserve of it since at least the 18th C. But the hubris, narrowness, and ego those comments reveal...wow Did this man ever grow up?
Love the blog by the way, suggest you and others might enjoy "alert and alarmed" where Evan Jones frequently provides solid substance for left wing views. This is not an ad, I have no association, and usually post myself at webdiary and bleedingedge. However looking forward to dropping in here as well.
Alert and alarmed
http://alertandalarmed.blogspot.com/
What a surprise - an Age magazine publishing a snide and pretentious piece making a Liberal look bad. Whoa!!! Who saw that coming???????
*bangs head against wall*
One wonders why he consented to the interview, and why he was so candid.
You couldn't buy that sort of thing. Now if only more MPs could have these sorts of probing interviews...
I finally got around to reading it yesterday.
So "Abbo" was a cunt at uni. Who'd a thunk?
It not only deepened my loathing for the man, it broadened it. Masterpiece.
Where can we find this Vanstone profile?
Thanks for the heads up Fits, I also only got a chance to read it yesterday.
I have a good friend who knew "Abbo" at the seminary. He says he was a cunt then too.
If I had to pick my favourite apsect, is the imagery of Tony, the lap dog, in parliament.
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